TV Reviews - Doctor Who 0808: Mummy on the Orient Express

So I mistakenly thought that this episode was the mid-series finale, but I was wrong. That episode, Clara's final episode (as far as I understand), is still in the (near-ish) future. My bad. Just FYI.

Part of me doesn't even want to review this episode. Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike it. In fact I rather enjoyed it. I think the reason for my lack of motivation comes from the fact that this episode was pretty right-on-the-nose average (spoilers for the end of the review, btw). It was good, but it wasn't really stand out, and to be frank, I liked it better when it was called Midnight. Okay, so not a perfect comparison, but its pretty close. Both episodes feature a monster on a train which can only be perceived in a limited way, which seems to have a malevolent purpose, which the passengers cannot escape because the environment outside of the train is deadly.

Both have large guest casts, whose characters' names I will never remember (seriously, this review is gonna have a lot of references to "the blonde girl", and "the conductor guy"). Both have a clever character who the Doctor takes to, Midnight having the kid played by Colin Morgan, and this episode having the engineer guy who seems abnormally tech savvy, even understanding parts of the TARDIS. The difference between them is that this episode has a greater emphasis on mystery, the companion is present, the monster is misunderstood, and the issue of distrust toward the Doctor is far less of a theme in this episode, though it is present.

The episode takes off with a blonde girl and her insufferable grandmother sitting together on what seems to be a twenties era train. Suddenly the old woman sees a mummy which no one else can see, and as a timer counts down from 66 to 0, the mummy approaches the woman, touches her face, and she dies. Queue the title card, and the Doctor and an apprehensive Clara land on the same train in the TARDIS. The Doctor is trying to reconcile with Clara, and he has chosen to do so by taking her with him on a leisure ride on a replica of the famous Orient Express which flies through space. The train itself is wonderfully atmospheric with a full twenties theme, complete with a really attractive lounge singer who I am totally crushing on. Clara keeps "sad smiling" as the Doctor puts it, and he asks her if she is alright. Clearly she isn't sure that she wants to be here, even if it is pretty fantastic, and hey, the Doctor noticed her emotions, however peripherally, which is a step up.

The trip is relaxing enough at first, but then the Doctor and Clara learn of the old woman's death, and others start dying, seemingly of heart attacks. Clara is upset. She was promised an uneventful trip this time. Despite this, she befriends the blonde girl, who had deep seated animosity toward her now-deceased grandmother, and she now blames herself for her grandmother's death. When she and the blonde girl get stuck in a room on the train with a spooky sarcophagus, Clara takes charge and keeps things calm, promising that her friend who is good with locks will be along soon to get them out.

Meanwhile Clara's friend (AKA the Doctor) is speaking with the conductor, Captain Quell, who is an ex-soldier with PTSD who is struggling to handle the unseen threat. Using the psychic paper the Doctor get's the conductor talking and learns that the train has a lot of smart people on it, many of whom were invited, as we learn later that the Doctor was as well. This is when the Doctor meets the clever engineer, Perkins. Also her learns that the mummy is apparently a mythical monster known of the Foretold, which is immune to weapons, always kills in 66 seconds once it is spotted by the victim, and which has been around, killing people, for thousands of years, wherever a mysterious scroll with alien writing on it goes. A scroll which is now on the train.

The train's computer, Gus, reveals that someone wants to harness the powers of the Foretold, and so brought the various big brains on the train together to investigate and reverse engineer this thing, or, ideally, trap it in the sarcophagus, which is really a stasis device. Suddenly most of the train staff disappears (they were holograms), and the passenger car where all of the guys with speaking roles (except Clara and blonde girl, who are still trapped) happen to be changes into a science lab. The Foretold keeps appearing at regular intervals to kill someone. The Doctor rather callously forces each victim, including Captain Quell, to talk about their last moments and what they observe of the creature so that he can form inferences, all the while lamenting that the creature hasn't chosen to appear to him yet, because he is sure that once he sees the mummy, he will be able to figure it out and discover the rumored magic words which will end the creature's killing spree in less than the 66 seconds that the creature will take to kill him. He comes off as arrogant, but you believe anyway that he just might be right.

The Doctor does figure a few things out, however. Thanks to a suggestion from Perkins, the Doctor figures out that the creature is out of phase with everyone else, and the 66 seconds leading up to the death of its victims is how long it takes to sync itself with them and suck out their energy, which is what has kept it (kinda) alive for so long. He also realizes that the creature is picking them off weakest to strongest, thinning the herd. It started with the oldest, moved on to the infirm, and is now working on those who have severe mental or emotional trauma. That means that the grieving blonde girl should be next, so the Doctor tells Clara to lie to the poor girl and tell her that he can save her so that she'll allow him to use her as bait. Clara contemplates just going and taking her to hide on the TARDIS, but there is a force field surrounding it, preventing escape.

With no other choice, Clara does as the Doctor asks, and she leads the girl to her certain death. The Foretold appears, and suddenly and surprisingly, the Doctor uses a device that he rigged up to zap the girl's trauma into his head, so that he sees the Foretold instead. To the ticking clock, he engages in some really compelling deductive reasoning. The bandages that the thing wears are worn camouflage. Beneath the bandages are markings like the ones on the scroll. So what if the scroll is not a scroll, but a flag? If the creature himself wears the same colors as that flag, that makes him a soldier. A super soldier who is equipped with a teleport to get around, fighting all who it perceives as being a potentially enemy, just waiting for the hostilities to end, not knowing that the war is long over. So the Doctor speaks the words which the Foretold must want to hear. As the counter ticks to zero, he surrenders, and the monster finally allows itself to crumble to dust, exposing the teleport unit inside.

Having the answers that it wants, Gus tries to kill the passengers by pumping out the air, so the Doctor uses the teleport to transport all of the passengers into the TARDIS as all but he pass out. From there he tries to hack Gus and determine who brought them all together. Whoever was behind all of this knew enough about the Doctor to send him free train tickets on the TARDIS, and to separate him from the TARDIS once he arrived. This means that this someone knows what he is, if not who he is. This backfires, though, when Gus self destructs the train. Disappointed, the Doctor drops the passengers off at a nearby inhabited planet, and he and Clara have another heart to heart.

Clara wants to believe that the Doctor isn't as heartless as he seems, and that he knew that he could save the girl on the train, that he only said he couldn't to try and throw the Foretold off of the scent of his plan, but the Doctor won't confirm this. He doesn't deny it either, however, and not for the first time this series you get the impression that the Doctor himself is struggling to find the answer to this question, that he himself doesn't even know. He clearly isn't heartless, though. He was callous with the victims on the train, but that was only because he was so focused on learning what he needed to to save the others, and I think Clara sees this, on some level, because after Perkins refuses the Doctor's offer to travel with him, after Capaldi manages to, with one expression, express all of the twelfth Doctor's loneliness and uncertainty, Clara decides to keep going with him on his journeys, despite the fact that she and Danny had decided that this would be her last outing through time. Upon hearing this, the Doctor is visibly relieved and excited. Just like last week, this final couple of scenes really make the episode.

As I said, I like this episode. It looks good, has some good guest characters who are for the most part likeable, even in the case of a majority of the redshirts. It has a nice mystery component, not just in terms of the episode mystery, but the mystery of who lured the Doctor to the train, and what role they might have later in the franchise. Also, once again, Coleman and Capaldi really bring their best, especially in the dénouement. There was also the sexy singer girl. Seriously, who was she?

However, the episode still managed to feel derivative, and its development and resolution mirrored too many other episodes this series. I liked it, but it just felt too much like more of the same. I thought that the wind-down scenes at the end were really good, but how many times this series will the character stuff just be tacked on to the end like this? Overall, while I still recommend the episode, I rate it a middle of the road 5 out of 10, absolutely middle-of-the-road average for Who, and a relatively low key story compared to what it looks like next week will be from the teaser.

Because I originally mistakenly thought that this was the mid-series finale, I had planned to do a really in-depth analysis of the twelfth Doctor, and what I think of him, here after the main post, but I will be doing this after the upcoming real mid-series finale instead, so be ready for that, I guess.